Always a Nurse
by Lux's Sister
Summary: In the early days of the Empire a group of medical professionals make a terrifying choice for the sake of their patient. What follows is a series of adventures starring the galaxy's unsung heroes, from the rise of the Empire to its fall.
1. Always a Nurse

**ALWAYS A NURSE**

Disclaimer: I am a nurse. But I work in Med-Surg, not in the emergency room, so I'm a bit fuzzy on ER details. With that being said some elements of emergency care have been fictionalized to fit the Star Wars universe.

Also a warning: this story contains descriptions, though not necessarily graphic ones, of injuries and medical procedures.

…

Petro was going to die. By accident.

He wasn't surprised by the dying part. Ever since the clones had turned on him and his master death was a constant possibility, but he thought he'd bought himself a few hours. He'd managed to evade clone troopers and the regular police for weeks now. It was only a matter of time before a droid recognized him from his wanted holo and alerted patrols, forcing him to bolt from his bed in the flophouse he'd rented from and make a mad dash to lose them. At this point he was used to running in bare feet with just the clothes on his back, his feet getting cut to pieces and the Padawan brain he hadn't been able to cut smacking against his back, while troopers chased him down alleyways and through fields until he finally lost them for a second.

No, what really surprised him was the _by accident. _

It had been a horrible idea to run down the freeway. But it was an ungodly hour of the morning with very little traffic, and the open road was the easiest place to use the Force to speed away after losing the troopers. So he did. He ran blindly and faster than he ever had. So fast, in fact, that he didn't notice the oncoming speeder until it was too late.

The last thing he saw was the headlights rocketing toward him, turning his whole world into a single bright light.

_I'm going to die. By accident. _

...

"Does this look like the break room to you?" Temi joked, pointing at Maddie's cart.

Guilty as charged, nurse Madeline Labiin raised her iced tea without looking up from her charting and said "JCAHO can bite me."

Temi clucked her tongue. "Maddie, Maddie, Maddie."

"Like you don't eat pudding when they have your favorite kind in the fridge." Maddie rolled her eyes. "Don't knock my drinks."

"Eh, that's fair." Temi dragged her cart next to Maddie's and sat down, making sure her lekku didn't get pinched on the back of the chair. They'd been nurse friends for as long as they could remember, having met their first day in nursing school, been inseparable through the entire program, and gotten jobs in the same emergency room after graduation. Every time they came into work and saw each other's name on the board, they smiled and the other nurses shuddered.

"So is this your first of three?" Maddie asked.

"Second," Temi corrected. "You?"

Maddie nodded. "Is it over yet?"

"Not quite," Kaylah the care tech piped up. "But it's not a bad shift. It's been quiet."

Everyone at the nurse's station froze.

"Who said it?" Dr. Kreps demanded from the doc box. "Who said the Q word?"

"The Q word?" Kaylah repeated. It wasn't really her fault; she was fresh out of aide training and hadn't learned the ins and outs of hospital culture yet.

"The word which is spelled Q-U-I-E-T," Temi explained. "Whenever someone says that in a hospital, stuff hits the fan."

"But it's three in the morning and nobody's come in all night."

"You think that matters to the gods of the Q word? Better pee now Kaylah. Actually," Temi got out of her chair. _"I'd _better pee now."

Maddie was about to grab her snacks and scarf something down before it was too late, when the desk radio squawked to life. _"Squad 51 to Bethesda." _

She shot Kaylah a look and grabbed the radio: "Go ahead 51."

_"__Bethesda we have a human male approximately fourteen years of age found unconscious along the side of the road, looks like he's been hit by a speeder. His GCS is 9, BP is 85/60, heart rate 140 in sinus tach, respirations 26, pulse ox 88% on non-rebreather mask. Both pupils reactive, left is dilated. We have an 18-gauge IV in the right AC." _

"51 start normal saline wide open," Dr. Kreps ordered. "What's your ETA?"

_"__Five minutes Bethesda." _

"Ten-four 51, we're waiting for you." Maddie shared a nod with Dr. Kreps and switched off the radio. "I'll take this one."

"Kaylah, page Neuro," Dr. Kreps chugged the last of his caf.

Kaylah did. "What was a fourteen-year-old doing out at three in the morning?"

"This is what happens when you say the Q word."

…

Maddie took the patient knowing full well he was going to be a trainwreck. He was in a coma, his vital signs were unstable, and there were a whole slew of neuro issues going on plus force knew what else after being hit by a speeder. On top of that he was a kid, which made everything worse.

She didn't know how much of a trainwreck he was going to be until he hit the door and the trauma team helped the paramedics transfer him to the bed.

"We don't know how long he's been out," the lead paramedic said. "A passing driver found him lying in the ditch and called for help. No name, no ID, no nothing."

Temi spoke up: "Blood pressure 83/61, heart rate 138, respers 24, pulse ox is still 88."

"I've got bilateral breath sounds," Maddie said. "Abdomen's rigid."

"Let's get a STAT CT abdomen and pelvis. Open up the saline." Dr. Kreps opened one of the boy's eyes and checked his pupils. "The left is blown. It looks like intracranial hemorrhage."

"The neurosurgeon's on his way." Temi put in the order for the CT. "Want a CT of the head too?"

"STAT please. Also draw a CBC, BMP, tox screen, ABG, and type and cross, and page the general surgeon."

"This kid's got abrasions everywhere," Maddie muttered, her bandage scissors cutting off the patient's clothes. "Not all of these are consistent with getting hit by a speeder."

"Like he's been beaten?"

"No, they're scrapes and minor cuts, mostly on the lower extremities and the feet. It's like he was running."

"Maddie." Kaylah froze at the head of the bed.

Dr. Kreps didn't hear her. "It would make sense if he ran out in front of the speeder."

"But these look like he was running for a while. I've got grass stains and gravel on his feet as well as the wounds - if I didn't know better I'd say he was running for his life."

_"__Maddie," _Kaylah repeated. "He was."

All eyes went to Kaylah, standing by the patient's side and holding a long, thin object between her thumb and index finger. It looked at first glance like a black cord, like part of their medical equipment. Only - Maddie looked closer - it was made of hair.

Her stomach plummeted.

It was a braid. A Padawan's braid.

Her fourteen-year-old trainwreck patient bleeding into his brain and his abdomen after he lay alongside a road for gods knew how many hours, was a fugitive.

She and Dr. Kreps stared in shock until Temi finally said what they all were thinking.

"Kriffing Q word._" _

…

Time stops in trauma rooms. Medical workers will walk out of them and stare at the chrono, shocked they were in there for three hours working on their patient. The two minutes between pulse checks during cardiac arrests feel like seconds or years. But never in Maddie's career had time stopped because she had absolutely no idea what to do.

"Do you think the paramedics saw it?" Temi whispered.

Kaylah shook her head. "It was stuck in the C collar."

"If he's a Jedi then they're going to be looking for him."

"If we call the cops they won't let us take him to surgery," Maddie protested. "They'll kill him!"

"They'll kill all of us if we don't." Dr. Kreps closed his eyes.

"We're not killing a patient! He's just a kid."

"I'm not suggesting that. I'm making sure everyone knows the consequences if we do this."

He didn't have to say what _this_ was, and Maddie didn't even know if it was possible. In this day and age, with HoloNet medical records and the Empire everywhere?

"We're either all in, or we're all out." Dr. Kreps looked around the room. "What's it going to be?"

Temi's answer was immediate, though her face had turned a paler shade of the normal blue: "I'm in."

Kaylah looked nervously at all of them, then at the patient before she said in a shaky voice. "Me too."

Dr. Kreps nodded to both of them. "Maddie?"

It was crazy. How could they hide a patient, especially one who was this sick, from the Empire? Surely there was no way. Surely they'd get caught before the kid even emerged from the operating room and then it was the business end of a blaster if they were lucky.

Maddie cursed her career choice. Why hadn't she become something safer, like a bounty hunter?

"I'm in."

"Then I am too." Dr. Kreps looked back up at the vitals readout. "We're going to have to intubate. Temi, scope."

"While they're doing that get the clippers off the EKG machine," Maddie ordered Kaylah. "Shave that thing off and throw it in the biohazard bin."

Kaylah took off like a shot.

No sooner had Dr. Kreps gotten the tube in and stepped aside for Kaylah to shave off the braid than radiology transport arrived and whisked the boy away, leaving Maddie to field the million comms that inevitably came with a trauma case.

…

"He has a brain bleed, a ruptured spleen, and he needed four units of plasma. There's no way he's going to the floor after surgery."

Dr. Kreps nodded in agreement. "So the ICU. That complicates things. I could make up a reason for a transfer."

"If we put him on the whirlybird then we'll raise questions. No one has reason to suspect anything unless he talks," Maddie continued. "As long as he's intubated there's no problem but once we take the tube out, we don't know how much judgement he has after his bleed."

"Nothing we can't fix with a ride in the 'van,'" Temi said. When Kaylah stared at her blankly she elaborated. "The Ati_van."_

"Except we won't be the ones taking care of him up there. Even if you or I floated to the unit for a day, we wouldn't be able to cover his entire admission. And then there's the surgeons to think about."

"I told them he was a John Doe," Dr. Kreps said. "They aren't asking questions. I think they get the sense they don't want to know."

"Can we convince them to order him a truckload of sedatives?"

"I'll just order them myself and hope no one questions or discontinues it."

"If I can manage to give report to the accepting nurse I'll tell her not to." Which led to the question of the day. "Now we have to figure out who to give him to in the ICU."

Several nurses she discounted immediately. They either didn't have the skills to care for someone as sick as this kid or would rat him out. In fact Maddie quickly saw the entire ICU roster disappear before her eyes, with very few exceptions.

"Alora," Temi said. "Remember her from school?"

Maddie did. "She's good and she'll keep her mouth shut."

"Okay, let's do it." Dr. Kreps nods. "I'll talk to the intensivist and the nursing supervisor. With a little luck I can get her on the case."

"Don't worry about the super. Vicki's on tonight; she'll go with it."

Sure enough Vicki was easy to convince. All Maddie had to do was mention that she thought Alora would be a good fit for this patient if staffing permitted and Vicki went with it. If this was a normal case that would be the end of it, but tonight was nothing but a normal night. So it was at the end of her shift that Maddie sat down and called the ICU.

_"__ICU, Alora speaking." _

"Hey Alora, it's Maddie. I'm calling up report for that pediatric John Doe patient you're getting."

Alora sounded rather confused. _"He's a post-op. Why isn't surgery calling?" _

"They'll call. I just wanted to give you a heads up on the meds Dr. Kreps ordered for the kid."

_"__You mean the very generous orders for IV sedatives? I was meaning to ask about those. Is he fighting the vent?" _

"He's been comatose since he got here so I'm not sure if he will, but those sedatives are more for after we extubate."

_"__...You don't think he's going to be violent, do you? He's been in a coma." _

"If the kid starts talking out of his head, sedate him. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 credits. Just give the Ativan."

_"__Maddie, what's going on?" _

Time for the moment of truth: "There are some things the kid can't say for his own safety."

Alora was silent for a long time and Maddie crossed her fingers.

_"__Ativan it is then," _Alora swore under her breath. _"I can't kriffing believe I'm doing this." _

Maddie could. "If things get messy I'll take the heat."

_"__You're never giving me a bad admit again, Labiin." _

Maddie knew she wasn't going to be able to hold up that bargain, and so did Alora. "Thanks for taking him."

_"__Don't thank me yet. PACU's calling. Here goes nothing."_

…

Alora checked her patient's ventilator settings for the fiftieth time and wondered, also for the fiftieth time, what she'd gotten herself into. Or more accurately what Maddie and Temi (because if Maddie was involved, you could bet your Crocs Temi was too) had gotten her into.

A close look at the patient provided an answer. There were the scrapes Maddie had mentioned, injuries that suggested running for his life, calluses on his hands that weren't like a worker's but more like a gymnast's, and he had an odd shaven patch behind his right ear.

Like a Jedi.

Gods help Maddie Labiin the next time she showed her face in the ICU.

With no other outlet for her anger Alora grabbed her computer cart and started to rage-document.

The ICU was high-stakes, high-acuity, but it was orderly. There was a place for everything, and everything in its place. Alora thrived on it. She lived for the protocols, the titration, the lifesaving procedures done like a well-rehearsed ballet. And then the ER had to throw a kriffing _Jedi _into the mix and wreck her mojo. As if her patient acuity ratio wasn't high enough.

Who was in on this? Maddie for sure, Temi most likely, definitely Dr. Kreps with his mack-daddy sedative orders. The surgery nurse hadn't given any inclination she was, nor had the surgeons ordered anything weird, so they probably had no idea. Looked like Alora was part of an exclusive club. The - Alora bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming when she saw the chart - "not documenting suspicious stuff" club.

She grabbed the sides of her cart so tightly, she was surprised the handles didn't break.

She was going to go crazy by the time this kid got discharged. And if she had anything to say about it, then it wasn't going to be a celestial discharge. She'd put in too much effort for that.

"Alright buddy. Let's give you a better haircut."

…

Petro was … alive?

He didn't believe it at first. He was so sure he was going to die he thought he'd joined the Force.

"Kid?" A woman's voice asked. "You waking up?"

Was that his master? Her voice sounded different. And his master was dead, and wouldn't put a tube in his mouth.

"There's a tube in your throat to help you breathe. Don't try to talk or cough; let it breathe for you."

Petro forced his eyes open and looked around. He was...in the medcenter?! Kriff he couldn't be in the medcenter!

"Don't fight the ventilator!" the woman ordered. Petro hadn't realized he was. "Relax. Relax and let the machines work."

He did, not willingly. It was weird having a machine breathe for him.

"My name is Alora," the woman said. "I'm your nurse. You were taken to the medcenter after being hit by a speeder. Do you remember?"

She produced a board with the alphabet and a series of common phrases. "Point to the answer."

Petro pointed to _yes._

"Great," Alora smiled. "So you're going to be hanging out with me for a bit while you recover from your injuries." She lowered her voice. "The good news is that me and your nurses from the ER have a plan to keep you safe. Namely, we gave you a haircut -."

_His braid. _ Petro tried to look but he couldn't see his padawan braid. Had...had the nurse cut it off?

"And we've arranged for you to go to a rehab facility on Alderaan, courtesy of Senator Organa himself. He tells me he's really looking forward to having you as a guest." She held out the board. "All I need is your name for the admission paperwork. And kid?"

She bent to whisper in his ear: "You only get one chance."

For a moment Petro thought it could be a trap. But all he sensed from the nurse was care and compassion. She might have been a little scared, but she'd come to terms with it and she was going to do her best to keep him in one piece.

_You only get one chance. _Maybe Alora was his.

He thought a minute, then pointed to four letters.

"'Aarlo?'" she asked. "You want to go with Aarlo?"

_Yes_

Petro had never seen a being smile brighter than Alora did when she touched her name badge. And despite the ventilator, he tried to smile too.

"I'll fill out the papers then Aarlo." She winked. "Let's see if we can get that tube out of your throat."

* * *

**Glossary of nursing terms: **

Cart: A computer on wheels

Celestial Discharge: Death of a patient in the hospital. Also known as "discharge to Jesus."

Code Blue: Cardiac or respiratory arrest. Commonly called a "Code."

The Joint Commission (JCAHO): The accrediting body for hospitals in the US, which makes all the safety rules and seems to be on a crusade against nurses having drinks at the nurses' station. It and its equivalents in other countries cause enough stress for nurses that the Star Wars universe just had to have JCAHO.

Ride in the 'van: To give a patient Ativan (a sedative), usually because they're having an anxiety attack or have become violent.

STAT: Immediately, as soon as possible.

Whirlybird: Helicopter


	2. Haldol to Room 4

**HALDOL TO ROOM 4**

The entire night shift was on edge.

Maddie jumped every time she heard police sirens screaming up to the ambulance bay, half sure they weren't escorting a transport but coming to drag the lot of them away. Temi started carrying an emergency "go bag" in the trunk of her speeder. Normally easygoing Dr. Kreps snapped at Kaylah when she dropped a call.

It was two weeks before they started to think they'd gotten away with it. Alora dropped by the time clock at shift change to let them know she'd transferred the kid to a care center on Alderaan. Why Alderaan no one knew, but they collectively decided they didn't want to. When - it wasn't an if, but a when - ISB came knocking, ignorance was the only thing that might save them.

That night came three days after the young Jedi left the hospital.

"We've got incoming." Kaylah announced to the nurses' station. "There was an ambush in the jungle, unknown injuries. It looks like it's going to be mass casualties."

"Prep the trauma rooms," Temi ordered. "I'll call the supervisor."

Maddie's fingers were always flying over her comlink, telling the blood bank to prepare for emergency transfusions. "How far out are the ambulances?"

"Two minutes!"

Two minutes later the staff stood by the ambulance bay door listening for the wail of a half dozen ambulances racing toward them, growing louder by the second.

All they could hear was a single siren, its mournful sound echoing in the night.

…

"I've got a soldier!" The paramedic said and opened the back of the ambulance. "Patient is Alexsandr Kallus, twenty three-year-old male, found immobile at the scene claiming he couldn't move, has a C-collar and a backboard. BP's 130/80, pulse 120, respirations 20. Reported he was knocked out by a blast and then he started -."

"My men!" The patient shouted, looking frantically from his immobilized position. "Where are they?"

Maddie raised an eyebrow to ask the same question.

"They deployed six ambulances to the scene." The paramedic lowered his voice. "The other five are going to the morgue."

"He won't be." Temi followed the gurney into the trauma bay. "Alexsandr, I'm your nurse and my name is Temi. I need you to look at my penlight."

"What are you - _the Lasat!" _Alexsandr screamed. "Where is it?! Someone kill it!"

"What's he talking about?" Maddie asked.

"Don't know anything about a Lasat but when we found him…" The paramedic shook his head. "That wasn't a war zone. It was a kriffing slaughterhouse. I've never seen anything like it."

"Alexsandr." Maddie spoke clearly and calmly. "You are in the medcenter. The Lasat is not here."

"What?" He tried to look at her.

Maddie stepped into his field of vision. "There's no one here but doctors and nurses. We're here to help you."

"Don't try to move." Temi double-checked the straps on the backboard. "Can you feel your legs?"

Now that he could see the healthcare team he seemed much calmer. "I...yes. I can feel them. I just can't move."

"Are you having any other pain?" Dr. Kreps asked.

"My head. I was knocked out. And then I saw...I saw…" Alexsandr started to hyperventilate and Kaylah grabbed a paper bag from the supply closet to hold over his nose and mouth.

Dr. Kreps finished his assessment. "Maddie, order a CT of the head, a spinal series, and page neuro."

"Got it. Anything coming up on assessment Temi?"

"He's throwing a few PVCs on the monitor but I'm not surprised with his anxiety level. Can we give him anything?"

Dr. Kreps didn't really want to, but Alexsandr's anxiety was starting to affect his vital signs. "We should proceed with caution, but if we calm him down we might be able to get rid of those PVCs. He can have half a milligram of Ativan IV."

"Alexsandr, I'm going to give you some medicine to calm you down." Temi said on her way to the med cabinet. "You should start feeling better soon."

"Where are my men?" Alexsandr sounded like a frightened child. "Why don't I hear people working on them? Tell me at least one of them survived the Lasat!" When the nurses fumbled for an answer he let out a long, mournful wail. "Oh stars, no! _No!" _

Temi started giving the Ativan. "Kaylah can you sit with him?"

"Absolutely." Kaylah pulled up a chair and laid her hand on the bed beside Alexsandr's. He clutched it like a lifeline.

"They were injured," he sobbed. "They didn't stand a chance. I saw it walking...it murdered them."

"I'm so sorry." Kaylah squeezed his hand. "Is there someone I could call for you? Your family?"

Alexsandr tried to shake his head but was thwarted by the C-collar. "I don't have a family. Could you call Colonel Yularen? I don't remember his frequency - I, I think it starts with five?"

"We'll look it up," Maddie said and plunged into the depths of the HoloNet for the public line for ISB headquarters, knowing Alexsandr wouldn't be able to remember anything in his panicked state. Impressively enough, Colonel Yularen's extension really did start with five.

"Okay they're transferring me to his office." She handed over the comlink. "He should pick up in just a second."

"Thanks Maddie." Kaylah held the device to Alexsandr's ear.

The young man swallowed hard. "H-hello? Colonel Yularen?"

_"__Agent Kallus," _the voice that answered the comm was warm and almost paternal, not at all what Maddie would have expected from an ISB colonel. _"My secretary tells me you're comming from the medcenter. Are you alright?" _

"Yes sir. I'll live. Thank you for taking my comm; I know you're busy."

_"__Of course my boy. I keep tabs on all my star pupils." _

At the words "star pupils" Alexsandr's eyes filled with tears. "I'm sorry Colonel, I don't deserve that title anymore. I failed, I failed my mission and my _men-." _

_"__What happened?" _Yularen took on a deep, panicked concern. _"Take your time Kallus, and tell me what happened." _

"We were on a routine patrol. Everything was fine; there was no sign of insurgent activity. I don't know where the blast came from and - I was knocked out. I came to, and I couldn't move. And then I saw it. The Lasat."

Maddie's stomach sank and Kaylah threw her a horrified look as they both realized where this was going.

"It walked through smoke and fire, like some kind of demon." He gasped. "Finishing them off. They couldn't fight back. I watched it come closer and closer, and then it looked me in the eye. I was so sure it would kill me but it lowered its rifle and walked away."

_"__My boy…"_

"Why'd it let me live, Colonel Yularen? Why me and not the others? And why couldn't I _do _anything? I still can't _move!" _

His shout nearly drowned out the frantic beeping of the heart monitor as his heart rate jumped to double the normal limit

Kaylah's head snapped to the monitor. "He's in V-tach!"

"Alexsandr, are you having chest pain?" Maddie was already in motion, applying electrode pads to the distraught man's chest.

He hadn't seemed to hear her. "Nurse, something's wrong with my chest!"

_"__Dr. Kreps!" _

"I see it." Dr. Kreps and Temi barreled into the room, crash cart in tow in case things went south. "Prepare for cardioversion."

_"__What's happening?" _Yularen demanded over the comm. _"Kallus, can you hear me?" _

"Colonel Yularen, this is Kaylah from the hospital. I need to let you go for a second; we'll call back as soon as we can." She terminated the comm and took a step back. "What can I do?"

"Take his vitals when we're done. Temi, are we ready to shock?"

"Shock? Am I dying?" Alexsandr screeched. "Please don't let me die! I'm not ready!"

"You're not dying Alexsandr, your heart's beating in the wrong rhythm and we're going to get it back to the right one," Temi explained. "Dr. Kreps, we're ready to shock. Everyone stand clear."

Mere seconds after the shock was delivered the heart rate converted back to a regular rhythm and the entire room breathed a sigh of relief. Everyone that is, except for Dr. Kreps.

"Alexsandr, your scans are back," he said. "You have a concussion, but there's no evidence of injury to your spinal column."

The horrible truth dawned on the nurses just before it dawned in Alexsandr himself. "I'm paralyzed. I can't be paralyzed if I don't have a..."

"Shock is one haran of a drug," Dr. Kreps said gently. "It can freeze a person good as any spinal injury."

"But…" Alexsandr's entire body shook. "Someone please get these straps off me."

Kaylah and Temi unstrapped him from the backboard and cervical collar, freeing him for the first time since the paramedics found him. "See, I can't move. I'm trying but I can't -."

The comlink rang again and Maddie picked up. "Colonel Yularen?"

Alexsandr turned his head to the sound of her voice. "Colonel Yularen will tell you! I wouldn't just freeze up during an ambush, there has to be something..." He trailed off when he realized what he'd just done.

Yularen didn't miss a beat. _"Give me to him, nurse." _

…

They moved Alexsandr to a quieter room in the ER so he could talk with Colonel Yularen. Maddie didn't know the man but she had the utmost respect for how he handled the situation. He talked to Alexsandr as long as he wanted, without making him feel rushed or burdensome.

Kaylah sat quietly along the wall to make sure he stayed safe and so he wouldn't feel alone when he finally ended his comm with Yularen. With her sitting, the job of manning the unit's desk fell to the nurses.

"Stars above is he a wreck," Maddie whispered. "Can you imagine lying there paralyzed while some hired gun kills everyone you work with?"

Temi shook her head. "I've always wondered how that kid felt, knowing his life was in danger and there was nothing he could do." She looked through the transparisteel door into Alexsandr's room, where he sat shaking on the bed and talking to Kaylah. "Now I know what it looks like."

"Do we have a plan for him?"

"Dr. Kreps wants to admit him and I'm inclined to agree, but since he's military they want to take over his case. We're probably transferring him to a military hospital."

"Hopefully there he can find someone who understands better than we do. Kaylah's doing a great job but we can't take the place of people who've been in his shoes."

"I don't know how he's going to be the same after this," Temi admitted. "Remember how we were after the Siege? How we couldn't stop thinking about the screaming and the blood? That's minor compared to what he went through."

"That is _not _possible." Dr. Kreps's voice raised in the doc box and caught their attention. He was on the comm, looking like he couldn't believe his ears. "He may not have a spinal injury, but he had a run of V-tach and we had to convert him with a synchronized shock. He is _unstable _and needs to be admitted. I'm not discharging him with no emotional support and a prescription he won't even be able to fill until the morning. If you won't - yes, as a matter of fact I will hold. I'd like to speak with your superior."

"Are they arguing with you?" Maddie asked in disbelief. "Who is this?"

"The military medcenter that's supposed to be taking him. They want me to discharge him on anti-anxiety meds!" Dr. Kreps fumed. "They say there's no reason to waste resources on him when his only injury is a concussion."

"Did they just tune out when you told them about the unstable heart rhythm?"

"In one ear and out the other. Ditto for his severe anxiety and emotional distress." He made a disgusted sound. "They won't put me through to a doctor. If one more bean counter tries to tell me how to care for my patient, I'm going to lose it. Just so you're warned."

It took a lot to make Dr. Kreps flip. In fact Maddie had never seen him this angry, even when they were caring for the Jedi kid or when a drug seeking patient tried to stab him with a stylus. But one look and she knew she did not want to be on the receiving end of a pissed-off Dr. Kreps. "And we can't admit him here."

"They shot that down immediately. I'll hold him here as a last resort, but you know how loud this place can get. That'll just give him another anxiety attack." The comlink rang and he picked up. "Dr. Kreps speaking."

His face stormed over for a second and then relaxed. "Yes, she's right here. Hold for just a second." He pressed the hold button and held the receiver out to Temi. "They want to talk to Alexsandr's nurse since they've already talked to me and 'have my opinion.'" He punctuated the last bit with air quotes.

"They want to talk to someone they think they can push into telling them we can discharge? Think again, mother kriffers." Temi took the receiver. "Alexsandr Kallus's nurse speaking. I hear there's some trouble with his admission."

While the being on the other end launched into a spiel Maddie and Dr. Kreps watched as the Twi'lek's face turned dark blue with fury.

"Tell me," she growled. "Is your idea of stable _ventricular tachycardia?!" _

Silence from the comlink for a half second and Temi charged ahead. "You comm saying 'he's stable, he's good to go,' and over here I'm shocking him! I'm shocking him while he begs for me not to let him die, and then I'm watching him like a hawk to make sure he doesn't crash again. So tell me, do you have hearing organs? If so then please turn them on, use the sense the good Lord gave you, and pull your head out of your shebs. My patient is not stable. He needs medical monitoring at a facility equipped to handle combat injuries. You will come to pick him up, you will admit him to a monitored bed, and you will do it _now!" _

She slammed the receiver back into the cradle with a satisfying _thunk. _You could hear a pin drop in the ER.

Temi cleared her throat. "That should do it," she said and made her way to check on Alexsandr, who was staring at them with the knowledge he was the cause of the screaming nurse.

Maddie stopped her. "Hey. When transport comes tell them I was the nurse on the comm."

"I can catch my own flak Mads."

"Not with these people," Maddie lowered her voice. "It's the Imperial military. They'll take lip from a human more easily than from a Twi'lek."

That shut Temi up. No one could deny the Empire was speciesist and an incident could draw attention to the emergency room and by extension, to the young Jedi. It was a risk they couldn't take. "Fine. But for the record, I don't like this."

…

"So you're the nurse who called our medcenter?" ISB Agent Jovan had a stare that seemed to go straight through whomever he turned it on. "You had some rather strong opinions on what we should do with one of our agents."

Maddie suppressed a shiver and puffed out her chest in her best Temi impression. "Whether or not your medcenter wanted to listen, he needs to be admitted. Sorry it came to this."

"No apologies necessary," Jovan took in the rest of the ER. "Agent Kallus happens to be a friend of mine. I'm glad he's getting the care he needs."

"That's good to hear. It'll be nice for him to have a familiar face around." She allowed herself to relax a miniscule bit. Maybe Jovan would be willing to look the other way for his friend's sake.

Her hopes were dashed when the agent continued. "You know I was worried when I found out he'd been brought to Bethesda Memorial."

"Really? How so?"

"It's nothing against you or your coworkers. It's just that a few weeks ago a young patient disappeared from your medcenter."

It took all Maddie's self-control not to flinch. "Disappeared?"

"A young boy who'd been hit by a speeder. He was admitted to intensive care in serious condition, but there's no record of where he went. We know he didn't die and one can't help but wonder what happened to him. It was like he was never there."

Of course they would notice. Maddie mentally slapped herself. The young Jedi had been a legal blank slate, with no name and no identifying documentation. Obviously something like that would get ISB's attention if they were hunting Jedi! "I wish I could help sate your curiosity but sadly I don't -."

"I think you do, Nurse Labiin. You and your Twi'lek friend, the one who actually called the medcenter? I'm still undecided on Dr. Kreps but he seems like the unfortunately noble type."

She froze. _This is it. This is how it ends. Alone in the nurses' station, trying to save Temi for saving an ISB agent. _

Jovan smiled like a chirn on the hunt. "Luckily for you three, I might be convinced to look the other way." He adjusted the buttons on his collar and Maddie's stomach did a flip.

"Maddie!" Kaylah rushed in. "Alexsandr's loaded up and there's a patient with chest pain in triage."

"I'll be right there!" She nearly squeaked, thanking all the stars above for chest pain patients at three in the morning. "Excuse me Agent, but I need to leave. Now."

Jovan stepped aside without missing a beat. "Of course. Have a good rest of your shift."

As soon as he was gone and it was determined the chest pain patient wasn't having a heart attack, Maddie made a beeline for Dr. Kreps in the doc box.

"He knows," she whispered. "That other ISB agent. He cornered me in the nurses' station and since he didn't get what he wanted it's only a matter of time before he leaks it to the higher ups."

"Did he hurt you?" Dr. Kreps looked over his shoulder to make sure Jovan was gone. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. But we have to get out of here or we're not going to be much longer."

"Find Alora. I'd find her myself but it would look suspicious," he ordered. "She knew who to call to get the kid out. Hopefully whoever they are, they can get us out too."


	3. I Try (To Be a Nurse)

**I TRY (TO BE A NURSE) **

"You said Alora sent out the distress signal two days ago." Temi paced the floor in the nutrition room. "And since then, nothing. No transmissions, no instructions on how to get the Dxun out of here."

"Not yet."

"You'd think whoever it is would be a little quicker on the response when they literally gave Alora a frequency to send a distress signal to when she discharged the kid to them." Kaylah chowed down a peanut butter cup while already unwrapping a second.

Temi had a different idea. "It better not be an ISB trap."

If it was an ISB trap Maddie doubted Jovan would have tried to extort her. "If high command knew they'd just drag us all away."

_"__Or _they use us to find the bigger fish. That's how it works in the holos."

"We're going to die anyway if we just stand here, and then who's going to take care of our patients?"

"Day shift," Temi said darkly.

Kaylah crushed the peanut butter cup wrappers into smithereens. "That's not funny!"

"It's reality." Temi's face turned dead serious. "Look Kaylah, that agent didn't say anything about you. We'll do our best to keep you out of it."

"It won't work. You know it won't work." Kaylah fought back tears.

"Hey," Maddie hugged her. "It's going to be okay. We're going to get out of here." Poor Kaylah. She was only a few months out of aide training and if this wasn't a baptism by fire Maddie didn't know what was.

Temi opened her mouth to join in when Kaylah's radio went off: _"Patient to triage." _

"If it makes you feel better you can assign them to me if they're rude or smelly," Temi offered.

Kaylah smiled a little bit and walked away. A few minutes later she beeped not Temi's pager, but Maddie's.

"The patient's a Togruta woman complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath," she said intercepting the nurse on the way to the patient's bay. "But she's only in her twenties."

"That's young for chest pain. Does she have any health problems?"

"No, that's what's weird about it. She's acting totally normal except she's complaining of chest pain."

That was odd. Most drug seeking patients knew better than to fake chest pain, and most chest pain patients were a little freaked out. "Got it. Grab the EKG machine and I'll meet you in the room." She pulled back the curtain to let herself in. "Ashla? I'm Maddie, your nurse."

"Hi Maddie." Ashla sat on the edge of the bed with her hands folded neatly in her lap.

"I hear you came in because you were having chest pain. Are you having pain right now?"

Ashla shook her head. "It's all gone actually. Must have been something I ate."

"Good to hear it's gone but there could still be underlying damage. I'm going to take a look at you and then we can -."

"Are you Madeline Labiin?"

Maddie almost dropped her stethoscope. _How the Dxun…_

"I go by Maddie at work," she said. She only managed to come up with that since it was her favorite response for nosy patients who asked her last name.

She finished her assessment and after handing Ashla the call light for if she needed anything, sped out of the bay and into Temi.

Temi raised an eyebrow. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"The chest pain that just came in knows my name!" She whispered. "I was just starting the assessment and then she asked me if I was Maddie Labiin."

"Who is this chick?" Temi looked past her to Ashla in the bay and her jaw dropped.

"What is it?"

"I think help is here."

"You haven't even been in there."

"Remember during the Siege I took care of that girl who'd been shot in the shoulder?"

"Vaguely." She'd been busy with her own patients on that chaotic day Onderon drove the Separatists from Iziz. Bethesda Memorial was swamped. But she did remember Temi talking about her shoulder wound patient. Apparently she'd been shot by a cannon and Temi was shocked the blast hadn't blown her arm off. "Is that her?"

"Yup. And remember the other thing about her?"

Maddie took a second to think and then her eyes grew wide with realization. "Will you help me start an IV in there?"

"Sure." She followed Maddie into the bay and made sure the door was shut before she addressed the patient. "Hey Ahsoka. How's the shoulder?"

"Barely a mark." Ahsoka pulled down her sleeve to show her. "How are you doing, Temi?"

"I have a feeling I'm about to be a lot better."

"If all goes as planned." She climbed off the bed to stand with the nurses and shook Maddie's hand. "Ahsoka Tano. I'm here to get you and your friends out of here."

"You're a Jedi too?" Maddie whispered.

Ahsoka winced. "Not anymore. But I'm a friend of Petro's. You would know him better as John Doe."

"Petro," Maddie repeated under her breath. She'd never allowed herself to imagine the kid having a name. "He's okay?"

"He's recovered enough to worry about you guys. And we don't have a lot of time." Ahsoka swept the hallway for anyone in earshot and pressed on. "I need to know who all needs out. The medical records don't have a complete list of who knew what was going on."

"Down here it's the two of us, Dr. Kreps, and our care tech Kaylah. Radiology and surgery don't know anything. Upstairs you need to find -."

"Alora Barrington. I have special instructions to make sure she gets out safely." Ahsoka nodded. "How quickly can all of you be ready to go?"

"Kaylah can go right now and the physician's assistant can sort of cover for Dr. Kreps if he disappears. We can pretend we're going to lunch and have the other nurses watch out for our patients. The problem's going to be Alora."

"How so?"

"She's in the ICU," Temi explained. "It's a locked unit. No one goes in or out without a badge or being buzzed in by the staff. There's no way to get in undetected and we're definitely not going to walk out with Alora without raising a lot of eyebrows."

"Locks haven't stopped me before," Ahsoka rubbed her chin in thought. "We can use your badges to get in. The hardest part will be the other staff."

"We could try the lunch break idea again."

Maddie shook her head. "Alora packs. She says the cafeteria food upsets her stomach."

"So we need a distraction," Ahsoka mused. "What about a Code Blue? That works on the holos."

"Alora might respond to it and then we'd have no idea where she was. Best case scenario, it works for a few minutes while the people from the floor run down here and realize there's no code. Have you seen that girl from Med-Surg? She runs like a gazelle."

"What if we send them somewhere remote?" Ahsoka held up a device. "I think I can get into your medcenter's overhead paging system. We could call the code somewhere far away and buy ourselves a little more time."

"Wait." Temi held out her hand. "You said you can get into the overhead?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Oh I'll cause a distraction alright. Give me the mic." Temi took the receiver from Ahsoka's hand and cleared her throat before announcing._ "Attention all visitors and staff. Bethesda Memorial Medcenter welcomes the Joint Commission for an annual survey." _

Maddie's eyes lit up. "Temi, you're an evil genius."

The effect was immediate in nurses' stations all over the medcenter. Nurses scooped water bottles and chip bags off computer carts and muttered "Hide yo' drinks, hide yo' snacks" while attempting to stuff them into desk drawers. Others scrambled to shove all the equipment into the very inconvenient cubbyholes in the wall or hide all the borderline illegal things nurses have to do to keep patients alive. Brand-new hires were quickly briefed on how to avoid surveyors or hidden in supply closets.

Kaylah materialized in the bay door white as a sheet. "What in the name of all that is holy in the galaxy," she said slowly, "Did you just do?"

"Caused a distraction for Alora." Maddie grabbed the tech's hand and placed it in Ahsoka's. "This is Kaylah. Make sure she gets out safely."

The former Jedi nodded. "My ship is docked next to the helipad ready to go. We'll meet you there."

"Get out?" Kaylah's eyes widened like saucers. "Is this real?"

"We'll send Dr. Kreps after you," Maddie promised. "Go with Ahsoka."

As soon as they sent Dr. Kreps into the parking lot, Maddie and Temi hauled shebs to intensive care.

As expected, it was a madhouse.

One of the nurses was quadruple-checking that she'd labeled all of her million IV tubings. Another was trying to hide the fact she'd written notes on paper towels because she hadn't had time to chart. They found Alora wiping down the chairs that hadn't been wiped down for two weeks because she'd been busy coding a guy on Wipe Down the Chairs Day.

"I should have known you two had something to do with this," she muttered when she saw them. "So what's the —."

"You guys know what JCAHO's doing here at 5AM?" Marcee from the ICU came around the corner. "Usually we don't have to deal with them."

Maddie rolled with it. "We came to grab Alora for the survey. Vicki said something about pulling her down there. Ready to go?"

Alora responded seamlessly. "As long as I don't get interrogated by a surveyor. Mind watching my patients Marcee?"

Marcee nodded. "Try to keep JCAHO away from us."

"I'll do my best. See you later," Alora said over her shoulder. The ICU door shut behind her and the calm veneer cracked. "Let me guess. Our ride's here."

"Waiting by the helipad."

"Then we better hurry before everyone realizes there's no JCAHO."

…

"Anybody ever been to Alderaan?" Temi asked in an attempt to cut the tension as Ahsoka landed.

"This isn't a regular trip to Alderaan. I think we're landing at a palace." Alora tented her eyes against the transparisteel pane to see better.

The passengers shared a look. They'd all either been born on Onderon or lived there long enough to know that a visit to the palace was rarely a good thing.

"Know anything about the people you discharged the kid to, Alora?" Maddie asked.

"I'll take the lead on this." Dr. Kreps made his way to the front of the boarding ramp as it opened.

"He's a good person," Ahsoka said exiting the cockpit. "I knew him during the Clone War. When he heard you had the courage to stand up to the Empire—."

The boarding ramp set down cutting her off. At the bottom stood a regal-looking man alongside a teenage boy who seemed to be scanning all of them.

The boy found his quarry and his face broke out in a grin. "Hi, Alora!"

_"__Oh my gods!" _Alora bolted down the ramp and clobbered him in a hug. "How are you? You look so good!"

"I got discharged from rehab. All I have are follow up appointments." The boy hugged her back. "Well, I sorta ditched that appointment — but when Senator Organa said you placed a distress call I had to come see you."

"Aarlo!"

"It's Petro, actually." He shifted from foot to foot.

"Aarlo, Petro, whatever your name is you still can't ditch your follow-up appointments."

"No way," Maddie's jaw dropped. "This is _him?"_

"Looks better when he hasn't been hit by a speeder," the regal man replied, a twinkle in his eye.

"Really does." Temi wiped a stubborn tear from her eye.

Petro raised an eyebrow. "Are these guys …?"

"They're your ER team," Alora explained. "Everybody, this is Petro."

Petro took a step back from her and gazed at the ER team with eyes that quickly filled with tears.

"Thank you," he choked. "I -." A sob cut him off and he buried his face in his hands.

The regal man patted him on the shoulder and blinked back a tear of his own before extending his hand to Dr. Kreps. "I hear you were the physician in charge of the case."

"Dr. Bremon Kreps." He shook the man's hand. "I appreciate your swiftness in getting us off Onderon."

"I only wish we could have been there sooner. Courage like yours is rare to come by these days."

Ahsoka smiled. "Madeline Labiin, Temi Drue, Kaylah Flint, Alora Barrington, may I introduce Viceroy Bail Organa of Alderaan."

"You're the senator." Kaylah realized with a start. "What's a senator doing hiding medical workers from the -?" Temi elbowed her and she fell silent.

But Organa wasn't fazed. "I was a friend of the Jedi during the days of the Republic. A friend of theirs, is a friend of mine."

"That and we seem to have some similar goals," Ahsoka said.

"We do." Organa clasped his hands behind his back. "You all worked at a level one trauma center, correct?"

"We did." Maddie replied. "All of us from the ER are a fully trained trauma team and the ICU routinely admits traumas and other critically ill patients. We've had experience and what we don't know, we can learn."

She gave Kaylah a reassuring nod at the end.

"Good," Organa said. "Qualified medical professionals are a valuable commodity these days. With so many injured there aren't enough doctors and nurses to go around."

Warning bells went off in Maddie's head. "What type of injured?"

Organa and Ahsoka looked at each other.

"It's pretty clear none of you have much love for the Empire." Ahsoka said. "And going off a comm I intercepted between Dr. Kreps, Temi, and an Imperial medical frigate, it's not a secret to the Empire either."

Temi swallowed hard. "That was recorded?"

Ahsoka nodded. "I'm sure the ISB agent whose life you saved with that comm appreciates it."

Small comfort to Maddie. "So even if Agent Jovan doesn't talk and we aren't blacklisted for patient abandonment, the Empire knows something's up with us. We can't go anywhere they are."

"That's why we'd like to offer you a chance to use your skills to help hundreds of beings, as far from the Empire as possible." Organa lowered his voice. "There are others like you, with the courage to stand up to this injustice. They need medical expertise if they're going to stay in business."

"We would split you into two different teams to cover more ground. Dr. Kreps, Temi, and Kaylah in a base operation, Alora and Maddie in a naval med bay." Ahsoka explained. "So, what do you say?"

"Base operation you say?" Temi cracked her knuckles. "Always wondered what it would be like in a field hospital."

"Can you teach me how to be a nurse there?" Kaylah asked.

"Stars yeah." They high fived.

"If it means I can be around for Petro, count me in." Alora squeezed Petro's shoulder.

It wasn't like they had a choice, but the way Ahsoka and Organa said it sounded like they did. Like they actually cared about them.

And besides, Maddie _really _liked the thought of taking shots at the empire that almost killed two of her patients.

"We're in," she said and nodded along with her coworkers. "When can we start?"


	4. Nurses Support Their Young

**NURSES SUPPORT THEIR YOUNG**

At least the good ones do. For everyone's reference, new nurses are usually on orientation for at least two months.

Shoutout to my awesome preceptors Monica, Steph, Stacie, and Kristen, and also the lady who made her husband six egg sandwiches after he accidentally gave himself too much insulin.

...

_Fourteen years later_

The ink had not yet dried on Eden Foley's nursing license when her coworker walked out of the med bay on the Star Destroyer _Lawbringer _and left her all by herself.

"Don't call me unless someone's actually dying," the offgoing nurse said as she gathered her things.

"Okay." Eden fiddled with her stethoscope so the nurse wouldn't see her hands shaking. "Where can I go if I have questions?"

The senior nurse raised an eyebrow. "You had orientation, right? You should know this."

Orientation had consisted of one day to learn the electronic medical record system. It did not make Eden feel at all confident about actual patient care, but she swallowed her objections. "Yeah, I did. Have a good night."

This was going to be interesting. She hadn't taken care of patients since nursing school a month back, and then she'd had her instructor looking over her shoulder. It was a big jump to go from that to running a med bay by herself. Luckily her patients for the day weren't very complicated - just two Stormtroopers whose heads had been knocked into each other by a rebel one described as a "rare hairless Wookiee." And didn't all new grads not feel ready to be on their own? With any luck she could make it through the shift without crying or throwing up. .

She'd no sooner psyched herself up when the desk phone rang. It was the nurse line set up for people to call for medical advice.

She fought back the encroaching terror and picked up the receiver. "Medical, this is Eden. How can I help you?"

_"__It's one of our crewmembers," _a man answered. _"She went to bed last night and she was fine, but this morning she passed out in the galley!"_

"Is she conscious now?" Eden prayed this wasn't a code.

_"__Yes, but she's still on the floor and not acting like herself."_

_"__Sabine," _a woman said in the background. _"Open your eyes for me. Kanan, what does Medical say?"_

_"__Nothing yet," _the caller — Kanan — replied.

"You say she's not acting like herself. How is she acting? Does she know where she is?"

_"__Sabine, tell me which room you're in." _There was a mumbled reply and Kanan came back on the line. _"Sort of. She knows she's on the ship but not which room she's in."_

_"__It's the paint fumes, I'm tellin' ya. She's high off the paint fumes," _another male voice said.

Could this be some kind of toxic paint poisoning? "Did someone say fumes?"

_"__It's not like he makes it sound. Sabine is an artist. She was up late last night painting in her cabin and Zeb was concerned about the fumes. We all were, but she assured us she always wears a mask." _

A mask was good. It meant Sabine knew what she was doing and was unlikely to pass out from fumes. That still didn't get Eden any closer to a diagnosis. "Okay that's good information. I'm going to need to know a little more about Sabine. Does she have a history of medical problems?"

Dead silence on the line. Then: _"Uh...Hera?"_

_"__I don't know. I wish I'd been a little more insistent; she could have something and just never told us." _

_"__Why don't we ask her? Sabine, do you have a medical history?" _

_"__My 'istory…" _Sabine slurred and trailed off into a language Eden didn't understand.

Looked like asking the patient was a bust. "How old is she? She sounds young."

_"__Sixteen." _

She heard her Peds instructor's voice in her head: most pediatric problems were acute, not chronic. That should help. "Tell me more about what happened this morning."

Kanan seemed relieved that he could answer this one. _"We always eat together in the galley but this morning Hera had to wake her up for breakfast. She's had a cold for the past few days so we didn't think much of it. She said her stomach hurt and she didn't want anything to eat but Hera convinced her to come for caf at least. Then in the middle of the galley - I didn't know humans could turn that shade of white! We asked if she was okay and she fell like a -." _

_"__KANAN IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN!" _Hera's shriek cut through the comm connection so loud Eden almost dropped the phone.

"What's happening?"

_"__Karabast, she's havin' a seizure!" _

_"__Quiet Zeb, I can't hear the nurse! And that's not a seizure." _

_"__Wob woh waugh!" _

_"__No Chopper, she's not defective and we are not getting rid of her!" _

_"__She's out again," _Kanan said to Eden. _"She went pale, she's shaking and if she tries to move she flops like a fish." _

Pale, shaking, loss of coordination, confusion, and passing out. Something clicked in Eden's head: "You said she was up all night painting. Did she eat dinner?"

_"__Dinner?" _Kanan sounded incredulous she was asking about food in light of the unfolding emergency. _"No, I think she skipped." _

"Okay this is important. I need you to feel her skin. Is it cold and clammy, or hot and dry?"

_"__Cold and clammy," _Hera answered.

It was the final piece of the puzzle. "I think her blood sugar's low. She needs to eat something with sugar in it."

_"__Zeb, get the meiloorun juice." _

"Not meiloorun juice. If she passes out before she swallows it she could choke. You need something like a paste or a gel. Do you have cake icing?"

_"__I have syrup for the waffles." _Zeb offered.

"That's better. Give her some of that and when she's more alert she can have the juice."

It felt like it took hours for Zeb to get the syrup and Eden to direct Hera to give it to Sabine, but it was less than a minute before Kanan said _"Her eyes are open. Sabine, can you tell me where you are?" _

_"__On the floor." _Sabine sounded baffled but coherent. _"Why am I on the floor? And why is Hera holding me?"_

_"__That's our girl." _Kanan laughed.

"Good to hear it." Eden didn't realize her heart had been pounding until it slowed down. "Give her something to eat with carbs and protein and she should be fine. Bring her to Medical when you have the chance."

_"__Thank you Nurse Eden." _Hera said. _"It's okay Sabine. Zeb's going to take you back to your room to lie down while I make you something to eat." _

The last thing Eden heard before she hung up was a confused: _"Zeb's going to do what?" _

…

"Hera, I'm fine!" Maddie heard the teenager's complaint before she even got to the medical bay on _Phoenix Home. _"None of this is necessary and - who even are these people?"

"They're friends I've made an arrangement with in the case any of us need medical care. Good thing we did too, because today you need it."

"No I don't. My blood sugar's not going to drop - you made sure of that with your force-feeding."

"It was not force-feeding. And you _are _going to the med bay. Look, there's a nurse coming already."

Maddie rounded the corner and saw them, a green Twi'lek and a teenager wearing Mandalorian armor and the universal "I don't want to be here but my mom dragged me" expression.

"Hello," Hera smiled at Maddie. "We were told to come to Medical. Sabine here had a low blood sugar episode this morning."

"Probably going to have _high _blood sugar after what you put me through," Sabine grumbled and trudged after Maddie.

"We'll do a quick test to check. Are you a diabetic?" Maddie asked and showed Sabine to an emergency bay.

"No," Sabine sighed. "I have a cold and I skipped dinner last night and apparently that's the perfect storm for having low blood sugar when you wake up in the morning. So I passed out."

"She didn't just pass out," Hera cut in. "She was shaking and pale, looked like death. We called the nurse line right away for help and thank the stars we did. She knew just what to do."

"Carbs and protein?" Maddie guessed.

"Yeah and then Hera here took it to another level."

Hera shot the teenager a look. "Don't be dramatic."

"You made me eat six egg sandwiches, Hera! _Six!" _

That would explain the very active bowel sounds Maddie was hearing.

"To be fair, egg sandwiches are a good thing to eat after a hypoglycemic event," she said and replaced her stethoscope around her neck. "Though six is a little excessive. You probably would have been okay with just one."

Sabine, identifying the nurse as a potential powerful ally, nodded energetically. "You don't know the half of it. She would give me one and then go right back to the galley and start frying the next one, with her sociopathic droid watching me to make sure I ate it."

"I'm sorry Sabine." Hera's cheeks turned a deeper shade of green and she wrung her hands together. Maddie had seen that look enough to know what it was: the "my child is sick and I don't know what to do so I'm going to overdo one thing" look.

"I don't think there will be any lasting damage from the sandwiches or the incident," she said managing to pacify both mother and daughter. "Sabine, just make sure you eat a dinner with protein every night. If you start to feel like you did this morning, eat something sugary and then follow up with something with protein."

Sabine nodded; this she could handle as long as she never had to look an egg in the face again. "Yes ma'am."

"Thank you," Hera sighed, finally allowing herself to relax. "You've all been such a great help. Is Eden here? I'd like to apologize to her for my outburst over the comm. It wasn't professional."

Maddie blinked.

"There's no one here by that name."

"Oh sorry, is she on a different shift? She's the one who picked up our comm from the nurse line and was so helpful. We used her frequency to pinpoint your location to send the shipment of medical supplies. They should have gotten here around noon."

Maddie shook her head. "There's only me and Alora who work here. No one named Eden at all. And we haven't gotten that shipment."

"Maybe it's just been unloaded and the crates haven't been delivered yet."

"My old coworkers, my best friends, are bringing it over from High Command. If they were here, I would know."

Both women stared at each other unblinking when Sabine cleared her throat. "Hera? Hate to bring this up but did Kanan check to make sure he called the _right _nurse line?"

She'd no sooner finished her sentence than both Hera and Maddie ran for the nurses's station phones in a dead sprint.

Maddie got there first. "I need Commander Sato to Medical, STAT!"

...

"This is why we stay in the med bay and leave the smuggling up to the smugglers" Kaylah Flint, RN, paced the shuttle floor. "Things -."

"If you say 'things have places' one more time I'm going to scream." Temi swiveled in her place. "Scream, I tell you!"

"Both of you stop arguing." Dr. Kreps ordered. "We won't get out of this if we're fighting."

"How'd we even end up here?" Kaylah gestured out the viewport to the Star Destroyer looming over them, the one that currently had their shuttle in its tractor beam. "We were supposed to be meeting Maddie and Alora."

"Maybe they got ambushed and had to get out quick," Dr. Kreps suggested. "Look our best bet is to brazen it out. If we figure out why they're towing us in then we can ..." The ship's comlink rang and he looked. "It's Maddie."

"Better answer it considering this is most likely the last time we'll have the chance to talk to her," Temi quipped and pressed the activation button. "Hello?"

_"__Temi! I don't know where you are, but you need to drop out of hyperspace and change course right now. Your contact gave you the wrong frequency by mistake and I think she sent you to a -." _

"Star Destroyer? Yep, she did. We're currently caught in their tractor beam."

_"__Tractor — kriff. Commander, they already got caught! What do we —." _The transmission cut out with a buzz of static.

"They're jamming comms so they can contact us."

"Oh come _on," _Kaylah groaned.

_"__Attention unidentified shuttle," _a voice said. _"Prepare for boarding and inspection of all crew and cargo."_

Dr. Kreps thought fast. "Attention _Lawbringer, _we are a medical transport moving critical supplies to a med frigate. Lives are at stake and time is of the essence. We request immediate release after transmission of clearance codes."

_"__Request denied shuttle."_

He killed the transmission. "Well kriff."

"Throw your coat and badge in the incinerator," Temi reached out to take the items from him. "And say you're a nurse. They won't pay you as much attention if they don't know you're a doctor."

"So we're going with the supply transport story?" Kaylah asked adding her own badge to the incinerator pile.

"Better hope it works."

It did not work.

Everything was fine at first. The troopers bought their story and even apologized for holding them up on an important trip. That was, until they found a crate of morphine in the hold. And no, they did not have the proper permits for it.

The troopers marched them down to the brig before they could think twice.

…

Eden felt like the queen of the _Lawbringer._

What had she done today? Oh, not much. Just handled a Rapid Response by herself on her first day. She could do this! She could take care of people and she wouldn't even cry or puke!

She'd even handled an admission on her own. The patient was an older officer who felt a little under the weather after a night of drinking. She hooked him to IV fluids and let him rest.

Okay, everything was good. She had time to check on her charting. Eden sat down at her cart and tried to remember what she had done.

"Hey nurse," a supply tech breezed into Medical with a box in hand. "You have a locking drug box right? We have some morphine from smugglers that needs locked up."

"Sure, if you'll count it with me." Eden got out the narcotic count paperwork and her eyes went wide when she opened the box. "Woah. How did smugglers get ahold of this?"

"According to the guards they're a bunch of nurses." He explained the story the prisoners had told over the comm. "But they didn't have any records or permits for the morphine. Probably trying to make a quick credit."

"Good gods." Eden finished the narcotic count. "Well I hope it doesn't make a problem for you."

"It shouldn't be too bad. Have a good day." The tech grabbed the empty box and left the Med Bay.

Eden shook her head at the drug box and went to check on her patient.

And not a moment too soon. The officer was bent over double, gasping for breath and — stars, was that a _death rattle? _

"Commander!" She raced to his side. "What's happening? Are you okay?"

The commander shook his head. "Don't...know…" he wheezed.

Oh kriff. This was bad. Eden could barely hear the rattling of the man's lungs over her own heartbeat. "Um...it's okay. Stay right here. I'm going to get help."

She double-timed it to the nurses' station and commed the senior nurse. She was going to get eaten alive, but she had no idea what else to do.

The senior nurse's comm went to voicemail. Eden tried again. Then she tried her favorite instructor from nursing school. She tried every nurse she could think of. No one answered.

_Oh no._

This was a Rapid Response right? Maybe she should call a Rapid. Except she'd already commed anyone who could respond to a Rapid and no one was picking up their comm. It wasn't like there were people from another unit who could come.

Wait.

Maybe there were.

…

"Never thought we'd go down for drug smuggling, of all things." Dr. Kreps sighed and kicked back on the cell's bench.

Temi nodded agreement. They'd all thought about going down for helping Petro, or mouthing off to ISB, or because the rebellion failed, but drug smuggling? "Seems a little anticlimactic."

"It was nice knowing all of you," Kaylah said. "Thanks for putting up with all my nonsense when I was a scared little aide."

"That's what family's for."

"Think the rest of our family will be okay without us?"

"They're like Loth-cats," Dr. Kreps smiled. "They always land on their feet."

The cell door beeped a warning tone and the three of them stood up. Whatever awful thing was coming through that door, they'd face it on their feet.

They were _not _expecting a dark-skinned young woman in scrubs staring at them like a shaak in the headlights.

"You guys are nurses, right?" She asked, fiddling with her shiny RN name badge.

Kaylah cleared her throat. "Yes."

The nurse deactivated the ray shield.

"Oh my gods, come quick! I think my patient's coding!"

The prisoners took a minute for their brains to catch up with what was happening in front of them. They briefly considered that it was a trap, then decided they couldn't get into a worse position than they were already in and ran after the nurse.

"Who are you?" Kaylah asked.

"Eden Foley. I'm working the med bay by myself." Eden called the lift and they jumped in. "My patient had a hangover so I hooked him to IV fluids and now he can't breathe! He's doubled over making horrible sounds and -." the lift opened to the Med Bay. "He's in bed one. Please help!"

Temi took one look at the patient and said: "He's in fluid overload. Not surprising since the IV's cranked so high." She killed the drip. "What was that about?"

"What do you mean?" Eden sputtered. "He needed a bolus so I set it to the bolus rate."

"Not for a guy his age. He needed it to go slower so it wouldn't flood his system." Temi helped the patient to lean on the bedside table so he could more effectively breathe.

"...There are different bolus rates?"

Temi and Kaylah stopped what they were doing as realization hit.

"Eden," Kaylah asked gently. "How long have you been a nurse?"

"A-a week."

"A week?!" Temi exploded. "Where is your preceptor?!"

"I don't have one." Eden shrank.

"You've had your license for a week and they put you on your own? What kind of _kriffing star-forsaken idiot _came up with -."

"We're on an Imperial Star Destroyer," Dr. Kreps said dryly. "You do the math."

Temi released a string of curses and Eden gripped the edge of the table. "I'm sorry! I thought I had it under control but I -."

"Oh honey don't be sorry. This isn't your fault," Kaylah reassured her. " I've been a nurse for ten years now and when I started out I did stupid things, but Temi was there to catch me. No one could function on their own a week after getting their license; it's why you need to be with a preceptor. You're doing great under the circumstances." She took Eden's shoulders. "Okay, so you've gotten help for your patient. He's in fluid overload. What do you have to do now?"

"I...uh...call the doctor?" It all came back to her. "I have to call the doctor!"

"No need," Dr. Kreps said. "I'm a doctor. You can give him 40 of Lasix IV push."

"You're a…but the troopers said you were a -"

Kaylah stepped between her and Dr. Kreps. "Lasix now. Questions later."

…

"So you mean to tell me they expect you to run the med bay, the nurse line, and manage all the on-board medications after having your license for a week?" The Lasix had been given, the fluid starting to pull off the patient's lungs, they'd all changed into Imperial-issue scrubs and now Temi was interrogating Eden for all she was worth. When the young nurse nodded Temi threw up her hands. "That's it. We can't just leave her here. She'll kill somebody."

"I don't even know you guys!" Eden protested, slamming down her brakes. "I'm not going anywhere with you."

"I hate to break it to you Eden, but you sort of have to. You're on surveillance holo letting us out of the brig." Dr. Kreps said.

The cameras. She hadn't even thought of that.

"Even if there weren't any cameras, think about your practice. You just had to commit a felony to keep your patient safe. That's not practicing. That's being a vehicle to get people killed. You can't grow as a nurse or as a person like this."

"How else is there?" Eden blurted out. "It's not like I can get a job somewhere else. The Empire runs all the medcenters. You get out there, you sink or swim, and if you don't make it there's nothing you can do."

"There are places to work that don't involve the Empire. We happen to know of one of them, and we're hiring." Temi extended her hand. "What do you think about a ten-week orientation in a med bay a lot like this one, minus the idiocy?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Not really. If it makes you feel better this is how we got hired too and we've never looked back. Welcome to the team."

"Did I hear we made a new friend?" Kaylah returned from the med room slinging a bag over her shoulder. "That's good because we're going to need all the help we can get if we want to get off this tub."

"Got the meds?"

Kaylah shook the bag. "All there. Now we just have to get back to the shuttle and I'm taking ideas."

"Leg it?" Temi suggested.

"What are we, Jedi?"

"The JCAHO thing worked pretty well last time. Too bad no one here knows or cares about them, we could just make another announcement." Dr. Kreps sighed.

"That could work though. What if we said someone else was coming, someone they _do_ care about. What are the odds they'll fact-check if we say someone like Governor -."

_"__Attention all hands," _The intercom buzzed to life with the timing that only came once in a lifetime._ "The _Lawbringer _welcomes aboard Agent Kallus from the Imperial Security Bureau." _

Kaylah whistled. "Who did that?"

No reply and everyone's eyes went wide with horror.

"It can't be the same one, right?"

"If it is we are so dead I don't even want to think about it." Temi whispered.

"How many Agent Kalluses can there be working for the ISB?"

"You know what?" Dr. Kreps grabbed a bag of supplies. "Legging it's starting to look pretty good."

"We just need a cover story for the supplies."

"Like what?" Eden shrieked. "What kind of cover story's going to get past an ISB agent?!" Oh gods she was regretting this already. She should have listened to her mom and gone into real estate.

Temi looked frantically around the room when her eyes lit on something. "The thing that scares all men witless."

"You're not -" Kaylah's eyes tracked Temi's to the poster on the wall. "Oh, hell."

"Throw the stuff on a wheelchair and let's roll."

They draped a blanket over the wheelchair to hide the supplies and hit the hallway, which looked quite a bit like the medcenter during the fake JCAHO survey. Stormtroopers and officers scurried through the corridors hiding anything out of line or potentially so, straightening their uniforms and whispering amongst themselves how to hide from the ISB man. No one noticed three people in scrubs speedwalking to the turbolift with a wheelchair between them.

"The shuttle should still be in the hangar. All we have to do is get on and get out," Dr. Kreps whispered to Eden. "The trick will be making sure Agent Kallus doesn't see us. We have a history."

Eden didn't really want to think about what kind of history that could be so she just nodded.

"It might not be as bad as we think. He was so freaked out he might not even remember us," Temi said.

"You really wanna bet on that?" Kaylah whispered. "I sat with him for six hours and you don't get into ISB for having a crap memory."

"You guys saved an ISB agent?"

"Yeah. Might come and bite us in the shebs but hey, you can't help who comes through into your ER."

Eden thought about that and combining the information with their names stumbled with the realization: "You're those nurses who faked the JCAHO survey on Onderon to get away from the cops! We had to watch a video about you in nursing school!"

"We're famous?" Temi grinned. "Always wanted to be famous."

The lift door opened and they halted the conversation to scope out the hangar. The shuttle was indeed still there, two stormtroopers on the boarding ramp with datapads in hand.

Dr. Kreps craned around the lift to get a better view and returned. "I see the guards. Temi, showtime."

Temi took a seat in the wheelchair and shoved the bag of meds under her scrub top, then the blanket over that. "Why am I the one doing this?"

"Because it was your idea." Dr. Kreps did a quick once-over and nodded. "It'll have to work. _Hey! _You with the shuttle!"

The stormtroopers turned around, doing a double-take when they saw three people in scrubs pushing a wheelchair holding a panting, seemingly-very-pregnant Twi'lek.

"Thank gods we got here before you left. We need that shuttle to get her to the surface, STAT." Dr. Kreps jerked his thumb in Temi's general direction.

Temi let out a long, dramatic groan.

"What are you doing in the hangar?" The first stormtrooper backpedaled frantically. "Get her to Medical!"

The second was apparently a father. "Sir we appreciate your situation but this shuttle is off-limits."

"Believe me we can't have this kid in Medical. If I had the time I'd explain everything but I don't -."

Temi wailed again and the first stormtrooper swayed like he was going to pass out.

"- Look, if it's that important we'll have a paramedic bring it right back. No harm, no foul."

"Sir, you understand there's an ISB agent coming to inspect the ship."

"Yes, but do _you _understand who this woman's lover is?" Dr. Kreps lowered his voice.

"Uh…" both troopers looked at one another.

_"__Augh!" _Temi grabbed the armrests of the wheelchair and glared down both stormtroopers with a look that could melt durasteel. "Listen up! You let them take me to a real medcenter right now, or I'm going to have this baby on that ISB agent's boots and tell him it's _your _fault!"

If Eden had x-ray vision she'd swear she saw the stormtroopers go pale inside their helmets. They scurried off the ramp like so many ants. "Access codes on the dashboard!"

"Thanks." Kaylah shut the boarding ramp. "There's another shuttle coming in with ISB markings. I think it's him."

In his own ship, Agent Kallus watched the shuttle fly past with all speed and jump to hyperspace at a rate that couldn't be safe. Oh well, not his problem. He had a Star Destroyer to command.

…

"And that's our nurse line, on speed dial for you." Maddie handed the comm unit back to Kanan. "Hopefully you won't have to use it anytime soon."

Kanan sheepishly took it. "Thanks."

"Yes _thank you _Maddie." Hera fixed him with a look. "We won't send your trauma teams into the path of a Star Destroyer. Will we, love?"

"It's not a problem." Okay, it _was, _but Maddie didn't see the point in dragging it out any longer than she had to. "Everyone got back okay and we got another nurse out of the deal. Win-win."

They looked back to the main med bay, where Temi was watching Eden assess Sabine.

"Good job. Just remember to tell her to take deep breaths when you're doing lung sounds." Temi said. "Now, on to the neurological…"

"There's more?" Sabine stared ahead as if willing herself to be anywhere else.

"Not that much," Eden assured her. "And there are no egg sandwiches involved."

"Think she'll work out?" Hera asked.

Maddie smiled. "I know she will."

...

Preceptor: an experienced nurse assigned to work one-on-one with a nursing student or newly licensed nurse. Think of a preceptor and preceptee as a Master and Padawan team.

Rapid Response: a medical emergency which requires immediate intervention by medical staff, but no one's heart has stopped yet. Examples of a Rapid Response include a severe hypoglycemic event (like Sabine's), a seizure, or trouble breathing.


	5. Clear!

**CLEAR! **

Or: the author had to study for ACLS and one week after spent seven hours of her 12-hour shift in a code so ugly she and all her coworkers were remanded to counseling, and this is the end result.

...

When Maddie was in nursing school, her instructor for Ethics and Nursing Law talked about sleep. Nurses worked long hours and oftentimes, weird ones, but sleep was essential. You should never care for a patient if you hadn't gotten enough sleep. Then in the same breath the instructor informed them that they all would do shifts with only the vague memory of sleep to keep them going.

It wasn't a surprise. Every nurse knew what they were getting into when they signed up for the profession. Maddie had done it herself working night shift in an ER. But she hadn't known the meaning of exhaustion until she'd joined up with the rebels.

The med bay on _Phoenix Home_, and later on Atollon, was staffed with a skeleton crew, and it wasn't unusual to be roused from her bunk with an incoming trauma. Such was the case when the Empire attacked their base.

Or more like they'd shown up right when Maddie was supposed to be getting off a twelve-hour shift. Then it was another twelve hours before she and Alora jumped on a freighter to escape by the skin of their teeth, followed by another thirteen flying through hyperspace. At first she was too grateful to be alive and hopped up on adrenaline to be tired. But that feeling faded about six hours ago, and she hit the wall. Literally. She was on her way to get water for her concussion patient and slid down the 'fresher wall.

She didn't know it was possible to be this tired.

_Meatbag! _

A Binary mumble caught her attention and she forced her eyes open. The freighter's orange astromech rolled in front of her, alternately swearing and grumbling and she was too tired to translate.

"Sorry, what?"

The droid whirred in what sounded an awful lot like a sigh, and without warning jammed a shock prod into her ribs.

It wasn't a lot of electricity. It would only be a jolt if you were a Lasat, for example, or a teenager arguing about whose turn it was to scrub carbon scoring off the hull of the _Ghost. _But Maddie was neither or these things. She'd been awake for 36 hours and was throwing premature heartbeats from stress.

The electricity hit her heart during the most vulnerable point in the cardiac cycle, disrupting the electrical system and causing her heart to quiver instead of beating.

Maddie collapsed to the floor. Chopper smacked her with a servo to get her moving and froze. Meatbag Madeline Labiin had no pulse. And according to his databanks, organics needed a pulse to survive.

Oh, Hera was going to scrap him.

…

"I hid all the good rations in my room," Sabine whispered. "There should be a couple flavored bars left."

"Sounds good to me," Rex gave her a thumbs up. After the day they'd had, they deserved something to eat. He was about to follow Sabine to get the rations when Chopper came whizzing down the hall and cut them off, beeping in distress.

"Chopper," she sighs. "Whatever it is, it can wait five minutes."

But Rex looked past Chopper and spotted the hand fallen into the corridor. "That can't."

"I'll get Nurse Maddie."

"It _is _Nurse Maddie." Rex dragged her into the corridor and realized with a start that she wasn't breathing. Did she have a - Rex felt for a pulse in her neck and came up empty. Force, this was worse than he thought.

Kix's instructions came to him with crystal clarity. _If you find a brother not breathing, call for help and then rip off his armor and push hard and fast in the center of the chest. _

"Sabine, get Nurse Alora! Now!"

…

Kallus sat on a crate, suffering through one of Nurse Alora's every two hour respiratory assessments. At first he tried to beg off, saying he didn't have a collapsed lung, but Alora wasn't having it and eventually Kallus gave up. It was quicker to just sit there and get it done.

"Any difference in breathing patterns?" she asked, placing a stethoscope over his bruised and probably broken ribs.

Kallus shook his head and took a deep breath since he knew it was coming.

"Well your lungs sound good. How's the pain?"

_"__Alora!" _Sabine raced into the cargo hold. "Come quick! Maddie's not breathing."

Alora jumped off the crate and took off in the direction Sabine was pointing with all speed, Kallus and Sabine on her heels.

Rex heard them coming down the hall. "Chop says she's been down less than a minute," he puffed between compressions.

"Continue compressions. Sabine, manage the airway. Fulcrum, take notes." Alora ordered and shouted to the cargo bay and cockpit: _"I need help in here!" _

"Woah!" Zeb exclaimed as he and the rest of the cockpit crew entered the corridor. "What happened in here?"

"Zeb, grab her head. Jarrus, her feet. We're making a run for the med bay. Zeb, get ready to take over compressions. I'll lead until we get a doctor. Captain Syndulla, help me with the equipment."

Normally Hera wouldn't allow anyone to give orders on her ship, but in this case she deferred to the professional. "What do you need?"

"Do you have code drugs?" Alora felt naked. She'd run codes before, but never in a civilian freighter hurtling through hyperspace. And not on one of her colleagues.

"Just what there is in here," Hera handed over the _Ghost's _medication box.

"That'll have to do. Are we within comm range of the base?"

"I'll patch you in to Medical." Hera was already halfway to the cockpit.

"Do you have a grip on her?" The men down the corridor nodded. "We have ten seconds from when we stop CPR to restart it. Rex, stop compressions in three...two...one...go!"

The men threw Maddie on the med bay's cot and Zeb took over compressions while Sabine ventilated with an ambu bag.

"Did anyone see her go down?" Alora asked as she slapped the defibrillator pads onto Maddie's chest. What could have caused this? She wasn't complaining of chest pain, and no one was taking drugs. There was only - "Is this an electrical burn?"

It was. Right between the fourth and fifth ribs. And what's more Alora remembered the pattern from a former patient. "Who has a Taser?"

No answer. Then Chopper made a guilty _wub. _

"C1-10P!" Hera bellowed from the cockpit. "Did you shock Nurse Maddie?!"

Chopper waved his mechanical arms in indignation. _Electrical shock does not harm Meatbag Zeb! _

"That's because you shocked me in the leg. You shocked her in the chest!" Zeb shouted and winced at the pain in his shoulder from doing compressions. "I'm going to scrap you the first chance I get, rust bucket!"

"Pads are on. Rhythm check." Kallus said, checking their efforts and saving Chopper's mechanical life in one fell swoop.

"Rhythm check in progress. Hold compressions." Alora watched the monitor screen. V-fib. "Zeb resume compressions. Rex, charge to 120 joules."

"Yes ma'am." The defibrillator beeped it was ready. "Preparing to shock. Everyone stand clear."

Zeb and Sabine stepped back from the bed, hands aloft. "Clear!"

"Shocking in 3...2...1...shocking." Rex delivered the shock. "Shock delivered."

"Resume compressions." Alora had two minutes before it was time to check if the shock worked. In that time she needed to get some kind of vascular access to administer drugs.

_Dear gods, please let Hera have IV supplies, _She prayed and dove into the medical supply box.

"What can I do?" Kanan asked.

"I need saline flushes. Can you fill some syringes?"

"On it. Just normal saline?"

"Yes," she confirmed and tried to push her one precious prefilled syringe through the IV. Thank the gods, it flushed. "I'm drawing up one milligram of epinephrine."

"One milligram epinephrine," Kallus repeated and wrote it down. "It's been two minutes. Rhythm check."

"Hold compressions and change positions," Alora ordered and checked the defibrillator. "That's persistent V-fib. Continue compressions and charge defibrillator to 150 joules."

The overhead comm crackled to life. _"Medical to _Ghost, _this is Dr. Kreps. What do we have here?" _

"Dr. Kreps, it's Alora. We have a thirty-seven-year-old female found pulseless and not breathing after being Tasered in the chest. She's been down for about three minutes. We've shocked once and are preparing to shock again. I have IV access in the right AC and one milligram of epinephrine drawn up."

_"__Thank you Alora. Take over medications. Maddie, is the defibrillator charged?" _

"Maddie's the patient."

_"__What?! How?"_

"Captain Syndulla's homicidal droid Tasered her."

_"__Okay so we're down a nurse." _Dr. Kreps couldn't mask his shock. _"Are we getting good chest rise with the bag-mask?" _

"Yes doctor," Sabine answered. "I'm trying not to go too fast."

"Chest rise looks good from here," Kallus confirmed.

The defibrillator beeped again and Zeb straightened up. "Preparing to shock. Clear the patient."

_"__Resume compressions. Alora, give one milligram of epinephrine," _Dr. Kreps ordered once the shock was delivered.

"One milligram of epinephrine in, and the line is flushed."

_"__Draw up 300 milligrams of amiodarone." _

"Dr. Kreps, I don't have amiodarone." Alora searched the medical box again. What she wouldn't give for a crash cart. Hera kept a decent stock of meds, but antidysrhythmics weren't on her list. Antibiotics, sedatives...wait. "But I do have lidocaine!"

_"__That'll work. Draw up one milligram per kilogram of Maddie's weight." _

"Two minutes," Kallus announced. "Rhythm check."

_"__Hold compressions. Alora?" _

"There's an organized rhythm on monitor. Does she have a pulse?" She didn't wait for an answer; instead placing two fingers beside Maddie's throat. There! It was faint, but unmistakably there.

"We have a pulse! Sabine, is she breathing?"

"She is. I think she's waking up too." Sabine stashed the ambu bag and shook Maddie's shoulders. "Maddie, can you hear me?"

Maddie groaned.

"Don't try to talk," Alora fitted an oxygen mask over her face. "Next time you code would you mind doing it in an ICU?"

Maddie responded with a certain hand gesture.

Alora stuck a pulse ox probe on the raised finger. "Hey Dr. Kreps, her personality's intact!"

_"__Good to hear it. Keep her on oxygen and fluids. I'll meet you once you reach Medical. I think you're handing off to Kaylah or Temi." _

Probably both. Alora prepared for the profanity-laden chaos that would be handoff to Temi.

"Pulse detected at 0430." Kallus finished writing his notes with a flourish. "Anything else, nurse?"

"No thank you." She nodded to the cadre of unlikely but highly effective rescuers. "Good job, team."

"Can I get a heck yeah?" Zeb cheered and high-fived Sabine.

"Heck yeah!" Sabine moved on to Rex. Everyone got high fives - Rex, Alora, Kanan, Kallus, and even Maddie.

And then Chopper rolled down the corridor, spouting curses and protests the whole way: _I did nothing wrong! I shall not apologize to a meatbag!_

"Oh yes you will," Hera ordered, following him. "You're going to do it or I'll fit you with a restraining bolt!"

_But Hera -! _

"No buts, C1-10P! Tell Nurse Maddie you're sorry. Now."

Chopper made a final, disappointed _wub. I apologize, Meatbag Madeline. _

"For?" Hera prompted and crossed her arms.

Chopper deflated. _For almost killing you. _

It took a while for Maddie to gather her strength, but she slowly but surely lifted her oxygen mask so no one could mistake what she said.

"Captain Syndulla," she rasped. "Can I scrap him?"

...

"So yeah, he's been pretty consistent all night for me," the night nurse told Alora in report. "Just keep a close eye on his heart rate and the ABGs."

"That's it?" Alora asked, hardly able to believe it. "I've got a guy in a bacta tank, a chick on a ventilator, and a walkie-talkie on a nitro drip?"

"Yeah. I know three's a lot but we had to float someone to triage since your friend Maddie's down."

"Oh no! Not a problem at all!" She couldn't stop the giant smile spreading across her face.

A bacta tank, a ventilator, and a nitro drip. No traumas flying through her door with no warning. No slapping together dressings and jury-rigging equipment to "make it work." No code blues in a tin can hurtling through hyperspace. Just protocol, titration, and order.

Alora blinked back a tear. She was _home. _

Well no time to think about that. She needed to assess her nitro drip, then check on the labs and see if the ventilator was ready to be weaned. It was time to get to work.

"Scuse me Alora?" A large purple finger tapped her on the shoulder, attached to Zeb Orrelios. He leaned on the counter of the nurses' station, Kallus standing stiffly next to him.

"Hey Zeb. How's it going?"

"Good, good." Zeb grinned almost wickedly.

"We came to update you on Maddie's condition." Kallus said stiffly. "She's okay. They're talking about releasing her."

She knew all of this because nothing traveled faster than scuttlebut, but it was the thought that counted. "That's great. Thanks for telling me."

"You're welcome." Zeb clapped an arm around Kallus's shoulder. "Anyway that's not the only reason. Kallus here was real impressed with how you handled that code blue."

"I didn't know nurses had training like that," Kallus said quickly, shooting Zeb a dirty look. "You knew which medications to give and in what dosages, when to give a shock instead of a drug, that sort of thing. It was all very impressive."

"It's a common misconception. Most nurses have ACLS training so we can take over as team leader in emergency situations." She said and added lamely: "You did a great job with compressions and notes."

"Thanks." Zeb smirked and pushed Kallus forward. "So Kallus is on probation for 'bout a month and it seems I don't have anywhere to go. Think you could teach us that ACLS thing?"

"Well I'm not a qualified instructor. But you can get certified during the next inservice. Here," she grabbed a book from the unit's shelf and handed it over. "You can study if you're interested."

Zeb handed the book to Kallus. "Thanks. Hey, maybe if we all have a day off we could study together."

"Maybe." She had to renew her ACLS this year anyway. "If you'll excuse me, I have to see my patients."

"Of course. See you later, Alora!" Zeb punched Kallus in the shoulder.

He cleared his throat. "Thank you for the book."

Once they left the ICU Zeb took out his comm unit and sent a text message to contact Maddie Labiin. _Operation Pair Up The Rule Maniacs is a go. _

Maddie texted back faster than Chopper could cause chaos. _Copy Zeb. We're gonna make this happen. _

…

"You know, you're going to have to pull yourself together in Medical if you want to see Alora outside of it." Zeb said. They were in the commissary and no doubt by careful arrangement, had a very good view of of the table the nurses usually sat at. To Zeb's satisfaction, Kallus kept sneaking glances in their direction.

"For the last time, I am not interested in seeing Alora outside of Medical." Kallus rolled his eyes, hard.

"Then why do ya keep looking at her table?"

"It's not just her table Garazeb. It's the nurses' table."

"C'mon, it's nothing to be ashamed of. If beings didn't like each other we'd all go extinct. Just talk to her like I know you want to."

"You don't understand. I want to talk to them but it's not like that and it's not Alora I want to talk to. It's Kaylah and Temi."

Zeb's ears flattened in confusion. "What's so special about Kaylah and Temi?" He and Maddie both figured Kallus would be a better match for the calm, orderly Alora than loudmouthed Temi or snarky Kaylah.

"What's special about them is before they were here they worked at Bethesda Memorial Medcenter on Onderon."

It took a minute for understanding to sink in. "Karabast…that was where they -?"

Kallus nodded. "The first thing I remember clearly after the Lasat is Kaylah's face. She sat with me for hours, holding my hand and holding a comlink to my ear so I could talk to Colonel Yularen, while Temi was shocking my heart back into proper rhythm. They saved my life."

"You wanna thank 'em? Then what are you waiting for; they'd love to hear it. Ashla knows we don't thank the guys and gals in Medical near enough."

"I don't want to presume they remember me. It was just another day at work for them."

"You'll never know if you don't go over there." He turned in his seat to better see the nurses. Eden had just set some kind of dessert in front of Maddie, with a little flimsi flag reading CONGRATULATIONS ON NOT DYING.

"I can't - they're having a party." Kallus dug his heels in. "I can't crash their party. Maybe I'll talk to them la -."

"Hey Temi! Kaylah!" Zeb shouted. "Kallus has somethin' to say to ya!"

The nurses' party ground to a halt and Kallus resisted the urge to glower at Zeb. Instead he got up and approached the table in order to make as little of a scene as possible.

"I'm sorry for the intrusion," he said. "I don't know if you remember me, but I was a patient at Bethesda Memorial. You took care of me in the emergency room."

"Of course we remember you," Kaylah grinned. "We always remember the good ones."

_I'm one of the good ones? _Kallus swallowed his surprise and went on. "I wanted to thank you for what you did that night. If I hadn't been admitted I would most likely have died. You saved me, and I..."

Temi placed a hand on his arm. "You're welcome."

"Thank you for coming back. We don't usually get to see the people we've helped on a good day."

"And thank you for helping to save me." Maddie said. "From what I hear you really rose to the occasion."

"That was nothing." He felt his face redden. "I just took notes; Zeb was the one pushing on your chest."

"Then he'll have to come over here too." Kaylah scooted over to make room. "Sit down. The code team's welcome at our Maddie's Not Dead party."

...

ACLS: Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support. Think of it as a CPR class on steroids which trains professionals to do what Alora does in the story.

Code Blue: Cardiac or respiratory arrest.

Epinephrine: the most common drug to give during a cardiac arrest.

Lidocaine: A drug most commonly used as a local anesthetic. It can also be used to eliminate a life threatening heart rhythm.

V-fib: Ventricular fibrillation. The heart is quivering and not pumping blood.

Walkie-talkie: a patient who is able to walk and talk.


	6. You're Welcome

**YOU'RE WELCOME**

The firefight lit up the sky above the field medcenter on Endor, temporarily blinding Maddie from her task.

"Whose do you think that was?" she asked, casually as if she was talking about lunch.

"Better have been one of theirs," Dr. Kreps replied.

"From the looks of things at least one of the blasts was." Kaylah cruised between the rows of beds, bag of IV fluids in hand. "The bad news is the blast took out our Accudose. Manual overrides only."

Everyone groaned. They were expecting it, sure, but no one liked it when the Accudose went down.

"Need me to pop it open?" Temi asked.

"Already did, for all it's worth. Eden's cracking open another box to restock."

"They should hold for the time being," Maddie's patient, Leia Organa, winced as the nurse applied a bacta patch to her injured shoulder. "Imperial forces are scattered after the Death Star was destroyed. It's only a matter of time before we mop them up."

"Gods I hope so," Maddie wiped the sweat from her brow with her scrub sleeve. "Okay General Organa, you're good to go. Keep the bacta patch on until it falls off by itself."

"Thanks," Leia slid off the gurney.

"No problem. Alright, who's next?"

The question was answered by the comlink beeping on the emergency channel. _"Petro to Medical, come in. Petro to Medical!" _

Alora jumped on it with all the ferocity of a mother nexu. "Medical here. What's your code Petro?"

_"__You know that flash in the sky?" _

"Yeah?"

_"__Well it was my med frigate." _

Everyone froze. "Space, no wonder it took out the Accudose!"

Alora gripped the comlink. "What happened? Are you okay?!" Med frigates were staffed with two nurses apiece. Petro was one, having decided to follow in his mentor Alora's footsteps, and the fact they hadn't heard from anyone else was worrying.

_"__Able Nereno and I were transporting a patient when an oxygen concentrator blew up. He jumped between the patient and the blast." _

"Oh gods." Maddie felt her stomach sinking. She knew Able, worked with him in the past, and the Rodian was a good nurse and a good friend who always had a joke or a kind word when you were waiting in line to pull meds.

_"__Guys, it's bad. He's got full-thickness burns on at least seventy percent of his body, mostly the trunk, arms, and legs. His pulse is 140, respirations labored and I can see soot in his mouth. I put an IO in his shoulder and I'm dumping fluids wide open. We're coming to you hot! ETA two minutes." _

"Copy that Petro," Dr. Kreps hung up. "Maddie, draw up 20 milligrams etomidate and 100 of succ. Alora, prepare for rapid sequence intubation and massive fluid resuscitation. Temi, take Nereno's patient and find out how bad he got it. The rest of you, activate burn protocols."

"What do you need me to do?" Leia asked.

"Get us gowns, masks, and gloves." Temi grabbed a set of sterile scissors in a package and threw them on a nearby table. "Goggles or face shields too if you can find them."

"Where's our IO drill? We're going to need a second line." Kaylah finally came up with the drill and put on the goggles Leia handed her.

Eden shouted from the entrance: "Shuttle incoming! I think it's Petro!"

"Thanks for your help General Organa," Maddie said as the shuttle docked. Leia gave her a quick nod in return before she hurried off so as not to be in the way, and the shuttle ramp opened.

The medical team smelled Able before they saw him.

Petro looked up from his work. "He started wheezing just now. I'm about to lose the airway!"

"We'll have to tube him in the shuttle," Dr. Kreps crawled to Nereno's side. "Maddie, give the drugs."

Maddie took a good look at Able while pushing her sedative. Her friend and colleague's green skin was replaced by black and white charring and exposed flesh. At least the fire had destroyed Able's nerve endings so he didn't feel anything.

"Able, it's Maddie," she whispered even though he probably couldn't hear her. "You're home and we're all here with you. I know it hurts but you've got to hang in there."

But the pain wasn't what worried her, when Dr. Kreps sank the tube. It was the fact the burns looked wet. Without his skin there was nothing to hold the fluid in Able's body and if the medical team didn't replace it fast, he would die.

Stars above. She fought back a wave of nausea. Was this how Alora felt when she'd coded Maddie?

"I've got bilateral breath sounds," Dr. Kreps announced. "Petro, how much saline have you given?"

"Just this bag." Petro squeezed it to make it infuse faster. "I got the IO in right before you called."

"I've got a second IO in the proximal tibia," Kaylah said, hooking it to another saline bag. "Starting saline wide open."

"Has anyone done Parkland to calculate the fluid rate?" Maddie asked.

"I'm doing it now," Eden said. "Almost a liter per hour. Keep it wide open."

The team lifted Able onto a gurney and Temi passed them to intercept the other patient who was with … Zeb. Thank the stars they'd ACLS trained him and Kallus. "What do we have here?"

"Patient's Norra Wexley, fighter pilot. She took heavy fire in the run on the Death Star and we think she broke her arm. As far as I can tell, no burns."

"I'm fine," Norra protested. "I didn't get it nearly as bad as that nurse."

"Gonna have to agree with you there." Temi looked down Norra's airway and satisfied there wasn't any ash or soot, finished her assessment. "Zeb, tag her yellow and place her with delayed care. I'm going to help with the burns."

Back in the trauma bay Petro was rattling off report: "It took about ten minutes to get to him after the explosion, then another five for Zeb and I to get him and Norra onto the shuttle. So time of burn about twenty minutes ago?"

"His BP's 81/64," Maddie said. "Pulse 160 and weak. Do we have dressings ready?"

"Getting ready to apply now." Kaylah finished preparing the gauze. "I have Vaseline gauze and -." She froze. "I don't have a pulse in his foot."

Dr. Kreps's stethoscope flew to Able's chest. "He has a heartbeat. Check again with the doppler."

Kaylah tried and shook her head. "Nothing. It looks like compartment syndrome."

"We're going to need an escharotomy. Scalpel."

Maddie averted her eyes. She'd seen her share of escharotomies and they were never a pretty sight. Instead she focused on dressing the rest of Able's wounds, a time-intensive task that swallowed her concentration, when she saw the trickle of blood.

Oh stars. Oh _space. _

"Someone tell me they nicked his nose with their bandage scissors." It was half a prayer.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked. Then their eyes shot to the IO sites, oozing blood.

_DIC. _The realization whispered in the back of Maddie's mind like a ghost.

They needed blood and FFP.

They didn't _have_ blood or FFP. Not in a field hospital in the middle of a forest with a malfunctioning Accudose.

The nurses turned to Dr. Kreps as they all came to the same realization, the same unasked question in their eyes.

Dr. Kreps swallowed hard. "Eden, call all the medical frigates and tell them we need FFP, packed red blood cells, and platelets. Tell them who it's for."

Eden took off like a blaster bolt and Petro stepped in to take her place.

"There's not much else we can do with what we have. We're already pouring in all the fluids he can take." Dr. Kreps didn't like it at all. "Let's get those monitors on, I want a central line, and an art line if we've got a pressure bag."

"No pressure bag," Petro reported. "Temi is a surgeon around here?"

But Temi had bigger problems: "I just lost his pulse!"

…

There are regular codes, and then there are codes when a patient is in DIC.

Regular codes are intense, exhausting in every sense of the word, and get your heart pumping like nothing else.

Codes with DIC are all of that, plus the blood of the bloodiest, goriest horror holo you've ever seen multiplied by a thousand.

"Preparing to suction the ET tube. Everyone get your eyes." Kaylah announced. Everyone had just enough time to turn their heads away before a spray of blood shot out of the tube. Thank the gods Leia had gotten them goggles.

"I need a switch," Alora panted between compressions, sweat soaking her trauma gown.

"I'll take over." Maddie jumped onto the other side of the bed, her own arms quickly going numb. She and Alora had been trading off compressions since the code began, Able's pulse coming back only to quickly fade away again.

Dr. Kreps turned his attention to Eden in the corner with the phone and the note board. "Where are we on the blood?"

The young nurse shook her head. "They're all dry."

He looked from Eden to the blood pooled on the floor, sprayed across the wall and his staff, the filled suction buckets lined up like soldiers, and what was still pouring out of Able Nereno.

"How long has it been since we lost his heart the last time?" He asked.

Eden answered and Dr. Kreps's belly twisted into a knot.

"Petro," he said. "I need your help."

Fighting back tears Petro made his way to the head of the bed, closed his eyes, and gently touched Able's forehead.

He wasn't a Jedi. He'd given that up long ago when he decided to become a nurse. But sometimes, when patients were at stake, the Force would once again work through Petro.

Petro reached out, searching for Able's connection to the living force, searching for anything to justify the insane hope and dread welling in his chest.

Instead he shook his head, tears running down his face.

"Maddie, stop CPR." Dr. Kreps looked at his wrist chrono, rubbed his eyes so he could see the face, and cleared his throat.

"Time of death 1922."

Usually this was when the code team would sniff back their tears, clean up the body, and then go to cry in the refresher. Unfortunately for them, there were no refreshers to cry in.

So Eden pulled the privacy curtain, and they all cried in the trauma bay instead.

Minutes or hours later the sky lit up again, this time with brightly colored fireworks.

"What's that about?"

"We won." Petro didn't have to speculate. He was still tuned in closely enough to the force that he knew for sure.

Conflicting emotions warred: the heavy sorrow and crushing failure of a bad code, the loss of their friend and colleague, but the sudden adrenaline rush and excitement of victory overtook them.

Tomorrow they would process the code. They would bury Able Nereno and all the others they'd lost over Endor and figure out what they were going to do with the Empire gone.

But tonight they would shower, change into clean clothes, and celebrate with all their friends until they couldn't stand upright any longer.

Able loved a good party anyway.

Maddie threw an arm around Temi's shoulders.

"Let's get some drinks."

…

"General Syndulla, have you seen the nurses?" Leia asked after the party had died down that morning. "I was looking for them and they're not at the field medcenter or near their quarters. I didn't know if any of them found their way to your ship."

"Not recently." Now that she thought about it Hera had seen Maddie briefly, but that was hours ago at the crack of dawn. "Why are you looking for them? Do you need help?"

"No one's hurt," Leia shook her head. "Last night one of the nurses aboard the frigate died. Shara Bey and I will be flying to notify his wife and I wanted to know if there was anything his friends wanted to add."

That explained why Maddie hadn't been in the mood to hang out with Hera and the other Phoenix members. "Have you checked any of the other frigates? They might have gone there."

"Nothing. It's like they disappeared after they came off their shift."

"Wait a minute." A passing Captain Solo said. "These are night shift nurses you're looking for?"

Hera raised a brow. "Do you know something?"

"I know where the night shifters on Corellia would go after work. Where's the closest breakfast joint?"

It took some doing but Leia, Hera, and Han managed to hunt down the nearest breakfast joint: the abandoned commissary of the Imperial base. Food was being cooked and eaten by the horde of medical workers, along with an impressive amount of alcohol being mixed by non-expert mixologist Petro. It even looked like some of the Imperial medical workers were getting in on the fun.

And leading the alcohol-and-carbohydrate-fueled party at the head table, laughing like hyenas, were...

"Eden," Hera flagged down the closest person she knew. "How many drinks have Temi and Maddie had?"

"Three maybe?" Eden giggled, at least four deep herself. "Why, do you want one?"

"No thanks, I had plenty last night." Hera left Eden to her celebration and turned to Leia. "I don't think you're going to get a sober response from any of them."

Leia nodded. "I always heard nurses' parties were wild, but I've never gotten a chance to see it in person before now."

"If they're all drunk who's manning Medical?" Solo asked incredulously.

"Day shift," came the clearheaded reply from Dr. Kreps. He'd gone easy on the alcohol in favor of food. "They'll be good by the time they have to work again."

"'Excuse me everyone!" Maddie stood on her seat drink in hand, wobbling only a little. The commissary quieted down and she continued. "Temi and I had an idea that we should have a toast for all our friends who aren't here drinking with us."

The medical staff murmured agreement which quickly devolved into discussion over who to toast.

Alora was first to raise her glass. "To Commander Sato, the best supervisor ever even if he wasn't a nurse."

That was a toast Hera could get behind. "Commander Sato!"

"To my friends from before," Petro mixed a brand new drink for himself. "I think they would have liked all of you."

More toasts began trickling in. "To Doctor Tarragon."

"To One-stick Holly!"

One of the formerly Imperial nurses staggered to her feet. "To Charlotte, who flew off with the Seventh Fleet!"

And in a testament to how much alcohol had been consumed, everyone else chorused "Charlotte, with the Seventh Fleet!"

"To Able Nereno," Maddie raised her glass. "And that all of them rest in peace, with potlucks and no one telling them where they can drink their drinks."

Temi cheered. "I'll drink to that!"

...

After the battle of Endor Eden was assimilated into the New Republic Navy and assigned to operate a Med Bay on a Star Cruiser. After five years of nursing experience she was more than ready for the challenge.

Petro was offered a position at Luke Skywalker's Jedi Academy but he turned it down. He now works in an emergency room in a major hospital, and regularly shares his story of how emergency medicine saved his life. He and Alora are still friends and talk all the time.

Alora returned to the ICU at Bethesda Memorial Medcenter after helping Zeb and Kallus study for their ACLS. In return Kallus taught her how to disarm and subdue an enemy in three standard seconds. Now everyone wants Alora on their team when they have to deal with violent patients.

Maddie, Temi, Kaylah, and Dr. Kreps returned to their ER with a hero's welcome. They do their best to provide excellent patient care to everyone who comes through their doors.

Also, Maddie continues to drink caf at the nurses' station. JCAHO can bite her.

* * *

Accudose: Medication cabinet.

DIC: Disseminated intravascular coagulation. The body forms many tiny blood clots which use up all the body's clotting factors, causing massive bleeding. For those of you who have not seen someone in DIC, you would not believe how much blood there is.

FFP: Fresh frozen plasma. The liquid part of blood, which also contains the clotting factors needed to reverse DIC.

IO: Intraosseous line. A catheter that allows drugs and fluids to be given directly into the bone marrow, often used in trauma since it's less time-consuming than getting an IV.

**Thank you to everyone who has stepped up to support healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We don't know where we would be without all of you. I'm moved and humbled every day by the number of people showing their support for us. Please keep making masks, ear guards, and hair protectors; we appreciate every last one. Shoutout to DuchessKenobi who made 32 ear guards and tons of masks! You are a hero!**

**If you want to help nurses, doctors, and other workers and don't have the sewing skills of DK there is one other thing we need. The hospital where I work is discussing what will happen if we have to lock down and keep workers on site, and we were worried about what we'd eat. Fortunately we came up with a plan but that may not be the case for other hospitals. If staff at a hospital near you are staying over, they would love you forever if you had food delivered to them. (For safety reasons, many hospitals can't accept homemade goods. Please check with your local hospital for their policy.)**

**We will get you through COVID-19, but we need your help too. Stay safe, and stay home!**


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